Hey folks,

I eventually will be already graduated in less then a year, therefore I asked myself what to study and where to go after finishing school.
My interests: I play the piano and accordion and know German, English and Russian perfectly as my languages, have studied 6 years Latin in school which gave me quite a good overview about how languages work and are structured. I like biology as a subject, whereas I still struggle with the chemical parts involved, as chemistry includes maths, which I don't really like/care about. Especially this point makes it difficult for me to take a decision what to study and where to go, as I was advised not making my master later on in Japanese Studies.. Though, I'd like to have Japanese as my bachelor somehow and learn more about the culture and literature, also. I'd not be an "extra-burden" to me, as it's more fun to me (no learning of kana, kanji, not much vocabulary and grammar etc.)

Any ideas? What did you chose/study? What has a futural perspective? I want to study something flexible and want to have not only one possibility working as a f.e. doctor after studying - classical - medicine at university. I hope you can help me out a bit?

Not to be rude, but I advise researching about the medical profession. A lot of fresh high school graduates are eager to enter professions like medicine or law, but have no clue about what those professions really are like. I recommend first googling "residency" and maybe "80 hour workweek." It's definitely not all about healing people and saving the world. I also suggest researching the prescription drug industry and its relation to doctors' incomes. Becoming a doctor is a serious commitment and will leave you in a lot of debt. If you're in it for the money, there's many more better choices.

vileru Wrote:Not to be rude, but I advise researching about the medical profession. Becoming a doctor is a serious commitment and will leave you in a lot of debt. If you're in it for the money, there's many more better choices.

Thanks for answering first! I suppose it will not turn out to be a money-problem much for me, though. I want to chose the right job, that I want to work in until I become old and I also want to pick a job that lets me earn "enough" money (at the best 80k€ per year. Something like that). On the other hand the job/direction I chose has to make fun for the rest of my life...

Edit: I'm quite interested how the "older" members of this forum, or those, being active here live in terms of which job they have and what they work as. I wonder what job Tzadeck has sometimes for example :) Just curiousity.

vileru Wrote:Not to be rude, but I advise researching about the medical profession. A lot of fresh high school graduates are eager to enter professions like medicine or law, but have no clue about what those professions really are like. I recommend first googling "residency" and maybe "80 hour workweek." It's definitely not all about healing people and saving the world. I also suggest researching the prescription drug industry and its relation to doctors' incomes. Becoming a doctor is a serious commitment and will leave you in a lot of debt. If you're in it for the money, there's many more better choices.

haha I knew a lot of people who said they would go into medicine, not sure if there still going into it.

i feel like you should look into actual careers and find out what they do. academic subjects are interesting but they always seem completely separate from real life work.

i chose computer engineering when i entered uni, then decided i didn't want to sit behind a desk and program all day so i switch to aero engineering. now i'm in pollution control for the government, and i sit behind a desk and do paperwork all day. fml

Tori-kun Wrote:On the other hand the job/direction I chose has to make fun for the rest of my life...

The best way to find this out is to talk to someone who actually does the job you're interested in or go to any number of blogs about professional life.

Since you mentioned that you're interested in becoming a doctor, I should point out some of the not-so-fun moments. I'll just put some of them in list form, and you can google them at your leisure:

- Residency
- On-call
- Dealing with difficult patients and/or patients' family/friends
- Dealing with other doctors
- Malpractic lawsuits
- Watching people suffer

My mom is a nursing supervisor at a 178-bed hospital, and she has worked at four other hospitals during her career. Although subjective, it seems to me that doctors and nurses generally smoke and drink more than the general population. Of course, they clearly know that such activities are unhealthy, but they are common ways to deal with the stress. Working at a clinic is going to be different of course. However, hospital experience is going to be unavoidable during med school and residency.

Tori-kun Wrote:I'm quite interested how the "older" members of this forum, or those, being active here live in terms of which job they have and what they work as. I wonder what job Tzadeck has sometimes for example Just curiousity.

I'm a philosophy grad student/university lecturer (in the U.S., grad students at large, research universities are generally required to teach undergrad courses). I typically spend 60-80hrs a week taking classes, teaching, studying, and preparing lectures/grading.

Academia is extremely competitive. Two factors explain this: everyone is obsessed with their fields and jobs are extremely scarce. Most philosophers I know (myself included) spend a lot of their free time hanging out other philosophers, which means that a good deal of my life revolves around my profession. The point is that you have to be wholeheartedly devoted to what you're doing if you want to make it in academia. And while I definitely feel this way, I'm still upset or frustrated by many things related to my professions, mostly bureaucracy and politics. Bureaucracy being the never-ending pile of paperwork I'm supposed to deal with and politics being my interactions with the also never-ending supply of pretentious and condescending know-it-alls (you have these types in medicine too!). Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of unpretentious, respectful people in academia who make my profession awesome. However, the rotten apples leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Anyway, I hope what I wrote was what you were looking for...

Tori, I'm confused by your original post.

Have you already decided to study medicine? Or are you just thinking about it? I wouldn't take medicine as it's extremely tough, competitive, and takes a certain type of person. could you face taking responsibility for someone dying?

If you're asking for more general advise, well in general for a job / career perspective, the least useful degrees are the arts ones. Do an art degree and maybe you can find a job in the arts, or office work lol. Next comes humanities and social sciences - study something like philosophy and you'll have a wide range of jobs available. Then finally the hard sciences - maths, physics, chemistry; these degrees will guarantee you find work at the end, but they're the most difficult to complete.

From a personal perspective, I'd say studying something you're interested in is more important than thinking about a future career. Pretty much everyone I know who dropped out of uni was due to them not enjoying their course. It's a tough 3 years, so you have to be fairly passionate about what you're doing. Of course doing a course can give you that passion..

I studying computer science, but it was pretty natural for me, as I already had a big interest in computers and was writing my own programs for fun at school. My uni course was basically split into 2 groups; the computer nerds (like me) who enjoyed it, and the "career" type students who had decided (maybe with the help of their parents) that IT was a good lucrative career to go into. Alot of these students dropped out or got poor grades, simply because they didn't like programming and didn't enjoy going to lectures.

Oh and one final thing; I'd advise against studying Japanese at uni, simply because it's not a particularly well rounded degree and you can do it in your own time anyway. But that subject has been discussed to death on here already; best to look back on those threads.

vileru Wrote:- Malpractic lawsuits

Just to point out - the above are primarily an American invention, and though they exist in Europe it's not on the same scale (in numbers or costs). Our doctors don't have to take out malpractise insurance for example.

If you want to work on medical-like problems, there are jobs in drug research that don't involve a MD.